Nourish Yourself

Paramita is a Sanskrit word that means “gone to the other shore.” Whenever I read this definition, I imagine myself swimming out to sea, leaving behind what is familiar but limiting in search of a more skillful way of relating to my life. 

The six paramitas—generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and wisdom—form a Buddhist framework for compassion practice. They guide us to move away from the shore of fear, control, and perfectionism and toward the shore of openness, warmth, and a willingness to work with life on life’s terms.  

So often when we talk about compassion, we frame it as something we cultivate for others. This orientation was what first drew me to Buddhist philosophy and practices. In working with disordered eating and body image issues, however, I began to see how difficult it can be to offer ourselves the same compassion we readily extend outward. Yet compassion is meant for all beings; we, too, belong among them.

“Practicing meditation requires a leap of faith. There is no meter measuring what we accumulate or accomplish when we sit with ourselves and stay. ”

To turn compassion inward, I began to think of myself as an other. I imagined looking into my own eyes and observing my whole being in all her complexity. When I did this, I could feel that she was just as worthy of compassion as anyone else. This shift deepened my understanding of the paramitas, especially in relation to the body: how we care for it, feed it, and speak to it. 

The six paramitas have long occupied a special place in my heart. As a young meditator, I wrote them on Post-it notes and stuck them around my apartment: on the bathroom mirror, next to the chair where I breastfed my son, and, of course, on my meditation shrine. I was struck by their completeness, their circular nature—the warmth of generosity balanced by the crispness of discipline, the edge of discipline mediated by the devotion of patience, the force of exertion, the steadfastness of meditation, and the clarity of wisdom—a quotidian Ouroboros that holds us and helps us hold whatever we’re working with. 

The first paramita—generosity—comes from both a desire to give and a willingness to let go. When we practice generosity in caring for ourselves, we treat our 

bodies as worthy of enough:  enough food, enough variety, enough pleasure, enough support for our well-being. This often requires the very vulnerable act of letting go of preconceived notions of the right way to eat and the right way to have a body. 

There is generosity in allowing ourselves to receive. This requires attunement to the body, which is always communicating, even when we have learned to ignore it. In listening, we discover a full spectrum of hungers that extend far beyond food—hungers for sensuality, novelty, beauty, connection, rest, meaning, and more. Food may touch these longings, but it cannot fulfill all of them. 

When people first apply generosity to how they eat, they often wonder how to recognize what they need and when. This is where the paramita of discipline steps in. Unlike diet culture’s militant notion of discipline, here it means discernment—the willingness to come back to the present-moment body again and again. Rather than forcing the body into compliance, we begin listening more carefully to what it asks of us. This means releasing our desire for certainty, because no rule or formula can tell us what our bodies need; bodies are dynamic and constantly changing systems, not machines.

Discipline in this sense is key to applying the paramitas to our bodies. I think of this any time I find myself automatically reaching for something crunchy and comforting. Rather than judging, shaming, or responding in a single predetermined way, I pause. What am I feeling? I ask myself. What do I need? Am I lonely? Tired? Overwhelmed? Do I need nourishment, soothing, rest, or stimulation? Unless I’m physically hungry, in which case I’ll always choose to eat, I often forego food completely and acknowledge a deeper emotional need. Other times, it’s both: I crave the comfort of food and the tending of my heart. In those moments, I eat with awareness, allowing the food to nourish my body while also pausing to acknowledge the feelings that need care. Discipline, then, is not about control but about meeting both hungers at once, free of judgment.

Without the arbitrary morality around eating, there is just the ongoing conversation between body and mind—experiments conducted and data collected. This process requires patience. Patience supports us to sit with uncertainty until something becomes clear or clear enough. It allows us to remain present with discomfort without immediately trying to change, fix, or control it. The thought and behavioral patterns we are attempting to rewire took time to develop and will also require time to remodel. Patience allows change to unfold at its own pace.

True change happens over years, but it is built from ordinary moments of paying attention. The paramita of exertion supports us in making that effort—not to earn worthiness but because we are already worthy of care. And when we practice in this way, we strengthen our capacity to bring compassion into the world, whether by modeling self-care behaviors for our children, filling our cup so we can pour ourselves into important work, or simply sustaining the hope that carries us through difficult times.

Meditation is the primary practice that strengthens all the paramitas. It cultivates stillness, receptivity, body awareness, and the capacity to remain present with ourselves as we are. Practicing meditation requires a leap of faith. There is no meter measuring what we accumulate or accomplish when we sit with ourselves and stay. There’s only the gradual emergence of presence, equanimity, flexibility, and a sense of humor about the human condition. 

The final paramita—wisdom—is often discussed in the context of mental clarity. But when it comes to embodied nourishment, I believe wisdom comes from connecting to the original wisdom of the body itself. Frequently, we are taught that the body must be controlled, fixed, ignored, or overcome. Yet the body carries its own form of intelligence: the desire for safety, for connection, for joy. 

When we reconnect with the body’s wisdom, we begin relating to ourselves less as projects to perfect and more as living beings worthy of care. Spiritual wisdom without attunement to the body can become abstract and disconnected. When we include the body in our compassion practice, something richer and steadier becomes possible. We become more capable of meeting ourselves honestly. More able to tolerate uncertainty. More willing to accept the fullness of being alive. 

The paramitas remind us that compassion is not only something we offer outward. It is also a way of inhabiting our own lives—of nourishing ourselves, listening inward, and learning, slowly and imperfectly, to stay. It’s worth it to keep swimming.